Looking ahead for the week to Australia, New Zealand & China

Australia

The two main confidence surveys are released this coming week, plus NAB’s quarterly Residential Property Survey. The RBA”s Guy Debelle form the RBA is speaking at an Investment Conference on Tuesday morning (9.30) and is a panellist at a Thomson Reuters FX event on Thursday.

The NAB Business Survey for September is the first cab off the rank and is being released on Tuesday (11.30). All eyes will be on the latest measures of Business Confidence (L: +8) and Business Conditions (L: +4), as well as survey detail across inflation and capacity utilization metrics, as well as industry and state coverage. The monthly Westpac-Melbourne Institute Survey of Consumer Sentiment is being released Wednesday (10.30) and has been underperforming relative to the weekly ANZ-Roy Morgan survey. Last month, the W-MI survey was down a disappointing 4.6% and it’ll be interesting to see whether there has been any recovery this month on the back of choppy recent news. While the RBA cash rate was held steady, there’s been a lot of coverage given to policy concern about investor housing and rising house prices and confusion over labour market data. Real incomes remain under pressure.

Wednesday also sees the Q3 NAB Residential Property Survey containing the latest estimates of Property Market Index, the outlook for house prices and the latest survey estimates of “overseas buyer” shares of new and existing residential property sales.

New Zealand

There is a privation of juicy data reports this coming week in New Zealand. So it will probably be Thursday morning’s GDT dairy auction that will get the most attention. The resumed price plunge at the previous auction has beaten us into a stronger state of agnosticism regarding near-term direction. We’ll simply move with the punches from here.

For Monday’s September Food Price Index we’re looking for a 0.1% fall, as part of the 0.5% we estimate for Q3 CPI inflation (1.2% y/y). September’s job ads, due Thursday 10:00am, could look a bit negative given the month’s looming Parliamentary election. But the afternoon’s (1:00pm) ANZ-RM consumer confidence results for October will be one of the very first post-election economic reads. As for Thursday’s PMI, it will be compared to its solid reading of 56.5 in August.

Meanwhile, we await the Real Estate Institute’s nationwide results for September, due any day now. That said, it will likely be another set of data difficult to read too much into, given the proximity of September’s election. More than ever, recent housing anecdotes will trump historical settlement figures.

China

September month new yuan loan volumes and aggregate financing volumes will kick off the week, if not released by then. They are due any day now.

Thereafter, it’s not a huge week for slated China data releases though what is set for release can be market moving. Monday’s trade report for September will provide a taste of what might be to come the following week from the main September activity reports such as industrial production. Annual export growth is tipped to push higher (from 9.4% to 12.0%), while import growth is expected to remain negative (at -2.1% from -2.4%) aided by receding commodity price input costs. Those lower costs should also see PPI (Wednesday) remain in the negative in Sep (at -1.6% from -1.2%) while CPI (also Wednesday) is also expected to be lower at +1.7%, down from 2.0%.

About the Author

Dave is a Director and Senior Economist with the NAB.

His bread and butter work is as a business, treasury or financial markets economist, speaking with clients ranging from the Bank’s agribusiness and corporate clients as well as to institutional clients at home and abroad.

He’s writes for the Bank’s daily and weekly economics and market reports, and speaks with the media, often on a day to day basis speaking about the economy and financial markets.

Dave did his economics apprenticeship with federal governments of various persuasions in Canberra, before he left Canberra in the late 1980s. He finished his indenture in Canberra as a senior economic adviser in the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s Department in Canberra, and before that in the Federal Treasury and the Bureau of Statistics.